[lbo-talk] Better live in Sweden than in the US: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better

[Wojtek S]

[WS:] One more point.  Arendt Lijphart makes a somewhat similar point in his
book on comparative democracy ("Patterns of Democracy. Government Forms &
Performance in Thirty Countries" Yale Univ Press, 1999.) but his indepenent
variable is the form of  governmetn - majoritarian democracy  (Anglo_saxon)
vs consensus democracy (continental Europe.)  rather than economic
inequality per se.  However, the income disparity and majoritarian democracy
seem to coincide, suggesting that the former is the factor responsible for
the latter.

Wojtek

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 11:03 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


>
> On Feb 18, 2010, at 10:46 AM, Bryan Atinsky wrote:
>
>  It is common knowledge that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives
>> and suffer more from almost every social problem. In a quite fascinating
>> book, /The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always do Better/ <
>> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spirit-Level-Societies-Almost-Always/dp/1846140390>,
>> epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson <
>> http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cps/index.php?page=2.0.0.40> and Kate Pickett
>> <https://hsciweb.york.ac.uk/research/public/Staff.aspx?ID=1197>
>> demonstrate that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone
>>
>
> A distinguished sociologist I know, who prefers to remain nameless, said
> that Wilkinson's results are very sensitive to how you specify the equations
> or set up your country universe - i.e., not very robust to alternative
> specifications, as they say. Or, more rudely, you can get the results you
> want by setting things up in a certain way. In my own crude way, I tried
> some multiple regressions using World Bank data on inequality and income as
> the independent variables and life expectancy and infant mortality as the
> dependent variables, and I couldn't get inequality to be significant. And on
> something like this, if the results don't leap out at you, then you might
> want to avoid making the claim.
>
>
>  The differences revealed, even between rich market democracies, are
>> striking. Almost every modern social and environmental problem - ill-health,
>> lack of community life, violence, drugs, obesity, mental illness, long
>> working hours, big prison populations - is more likely to occur in a less
>> equal society.
>>
>
> I wonder how much these results are driven by the U.S. If you did the rich
> OECD countries without the U.S., would the results be statistically
> significant?
>
> Doug
>
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